"Green Acres" it ain't, but we love owning and visiting the Hawksbill Cabin, near Stanley and Luray, Virginia, and a wealth of outdoor activities, including: the "World Famous" Shenandoah River, Shenandoah National Park, Skyline Drive, Luray Caverns, and Massanutten Resort. From time to time we'll post about other stuff, too.
As the number of blog posts grows, we've added a few navigation tools in the right column to facilitate getting around the site.

Nothing but Flowers

Monday, September 29, 2008

Socked In at Skyland

After a couple of days of wet weather in Page County, Sunday broke warm with low clouds, but no rain. A look over at the mountains showed some drama, as the tops of them were invisible - a cloud layer begin at around 3,000 feet, so upwards of 1,000 feet on the ones that neighbor us was not visible.

Still, Mary and I decided to go an grab lunch at Skyland, so we took a quick drive up there - here are some of the ghostly views that greeted us as we arrived at the resort.

After lunch, I wanted to show her some of the trail features on Stonyman. We have a little drainage problem with the driveway at the cabin, and they've done some things with the Stonyman trail that might work for us. Plus, I figured the trail would be an interesting walk in the clouds.

Here are some of the views along the walk - a fern glade, and then looking up into the forest canopy.

Here is the view from one of the cliffs at the peak, compared to a similar shot from my hike there earlier in the month.

All in all, the experience walking along in the clouds and fog gave us a distinct Big Sur or Monterey Peninsula feeling. Especially in the areas where there were firs and evergreens - the California coast being forested mainly with Cypress.

It was definitely out of the ordinary and turned out to be a great day to visit. But I have to admit that parts of the drive, especially those where the shoulders slope off in both directions so you didn't have any edge perspective, were a little discomforting.